ZiF Workshop

Towards a Media Aesthetics of Humour

The history of comical theories has paid little attention to the media specifics of the comical so far. Literary and cultural studies focused mainly on genre specificities, such as literary comedy, on cultural dependencies, or on special areas of comedy like black humor or comedy and Holocaust. It is true, the medium of film has been studied broadly — but without the key question about the difference between (audio-) visual and linguistic humor. Traditional comedy theories (Incongruity Theory, Superiority Theory, Relief Theory etc.) are primarily focused on language resp. texts, or on social, psychological or philosophical implications of comedy. However, there are specific visual or auditory aspects of the comical, as much as comical effects caused by contradictions between image and sound. The aim of this working group is to compare and systematically record the specific humor of audiovisual media in an interdisciplinary dialogue between Literary Studies, Linguistics, Philosophy and Media Studies (music, film, comic).

Please direct questions concerning the organisation of the workshop to
Trixi Valentin at the Conference Office. Questions regarding scientific content and contributions should be directed to the organizers.